Oklahoma City - Red Hawks

Oklahoma City was a little further than we expected, we actually camped in Norman, OK at a state park about half an hour from downtown OK City. The state park was a little strange, the only tent sites they had were hike-in sites, so we hauled all of our crap (and it’s a lot after 8 years of camping) down a hill to a beautiful site overlooking another lake. We failed to anticipate the effect of a wide open area like a lake if there were weather!
We went into Oklahoma City and just as we hit town it started pouring, we went to the park and they told us that although the game (Okalahoma City Red Hawks vs. Utah Bees) had been delayed, it would be played. So we bought our tickets and headed over to the Oklahoma City National Memorial on the site of the 1995 Oklahoma Federal Building bombing. This is a beautiful monument with a small chapel on one side and a long reflecting pool between two doorways marked 9:01 and 9:03 the minutes before and after the bombing. There is also a field of chairs that are lit from the inside representing every person who was killed in the bombing. The monument is beautiful and we would have spent more time exploring it except that the sky suddenly opened up on us. So we headed back downtown.

An hour late, at 8:00 on the nose, the game started. The park is very nice, reminded us a little of Memphis, but it was generally a nice park. We took an inordinate number of pictures of a rainbow just outside Center field and the beautiful sky. You would hardly have guessed that there had been rain.

The Red Wings became our first home-team loss of the trip losing 7-4 to the Bees. But we didn’t care because the Cardinals whomped the Astros so we were happy… for the moment!

We got back to the campground and were greeted by the Ranger who told us that they had just gotten a huge storm and it had blown our tent down and they were concerned for the dogs inside the tent. We were extremely nervous for our pups from listening to their tales of destruction, they told us that several of the poles were broken. When we got to the tent, we saw what had happened, the wind off the lake had blown the stakes of the wind/rain screen right out of the ground. It blew into the tent, filled with water and dragged the tent down on itself. The pups, Mojo in his kennel and Puja curled up in a chair were the only dry things in the tent. They are not dumb dogs! When I emptied the water off the tent, the whole thing popped back into shape, there was a fewpieces of torn Velcro, but no broken pieces. It’s a good tent. Unfortunatly everything we owned was soaked, so we tried to find some lap blankes and tarps to fashion a bed for the night and the next day headed to somewhere dry with laundry service!!